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As mentioned in a previous Facebook post, when told about the City of Fremont’s plans for residential growth at our last joint meeting, all five of the School Board members expressed strong concerns as to how our schools would deal with all of this development.

At last night’s School Board meeting a resolution with the following title was on the agenda – “Support for Reducing the Negative Impacts of Unrestricted Land Development on Fremont Schools”.

The resolution begins:

“Whereas, Fremont Unified School District (FUSD) has been experiencing strong year-over-year enrollment increases as a direct result of the City of Fremont approving new housing developments that generate large numbers of new students to the school district, and … (lots more whereas statements)”

And ends:

“Now Therefore Be It Resolved, FUSD formally requests a full accounting of all available property owned or controlled by the City of Fremont, and is asking the City of Fremont to suspend further approval of all developments until the land and/or funds are provided to FUSD to build the new schools needed to house the students generated by the developments approved by the City of Fremont.”

In my opinion, this is a simple and reasonable request – don’t approve more and more development that hurts our schools. However, the City of Fremont, without consulting with its City Council, sent a notice to the School Board asking them to reject this motion!

The Fremont Chamber of Commerce also criticized the School Board for even considering to speak out against continued, unchecked development.

Unfortunately, the School Board did cave into this pressure and did not approve the resolution.

In short, if you’re the School District and you try to speak out against the rampant development that is causing huge problems for your schools, the local City government and the local Chamber of Commerce will criticize you and tell you to stop it. This is not right! Let the School District tell everybody what’s really going on in this City regarding development!

Click below for the full resolutions and replies from the City of Fremont and the Chamber of Commerce.

Proposition 13 was designed to help retired homeowners on a fixed income whose property taxes were rapidly rising. It limited the amount one’s property tax can increase annually even if their property values go way up. This was a laudable effort.

However, the rules of Proposition 13 apply to commercial and residential property. Of course, applying Proposition 13 to commercial properties does nothing to help homeowners. It’s estimated that this costs California nine billion dollars a year!(more…)

This was a difficult issue with supporters of mine arguing strongly from both sides. Sometimes in politics you just can’t make everybody happy.

On the one hand, I am definitely in favor of promoting outdoor activities. I used to be a Sierra Club hike leader. It’s great that we have such a popular destination as Mission Peak.

On the other hand, the very heavy demand combined with the small parking lot has

resulted in significant impacts to the surrounding neighborhood. I’ve been there on weekends and seen the steady stream of people swarming the neighborhood from well before dawn to well after dusk in the summer. Also, the large number of hikers, especially those that are creating their own ad hoc paths, has caused a lot of damage to the park.(more…)

The big item on the agenda last Tuesday night was the Lennar project in Warm Springs. At 2,214 homes, this is probably the largest project ever approved by the Fremont City Council. When this project was first proposed we heard that development around the new BART station was going to be “jobs-centered”. I applauded that idea and liked the concept of a mixed-use development – even one that included a large housing component. However, I believe the proposal from Lennar is far from the ideal that was originally presented.

In short, Lennar got what they wanted – the right to build 2,214 homes/apartments. The City got vacant space where we may get jobs-centered development some day.